The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘Of course it’s the Grail,’ Sir Guillaume said dismissively.

  Thomas went to Genevieve and took the cup. He turned it in his hands. ‘If my father did have the Grail,’ he asked, ‘how did it end up with Cardinal Bessières’s brother?’

  ‘Who?’ Sir Guillaume demanded.

  Thomas stared at the green glass. He had heard that the Grail in Genoa Cathedral was made of green glass, and no one believed that was real. Was this the same grail? Or another green glass fake? ‘The man I took it from,’ he said, ‘was the brother of Cardinal Bessières, and if he already had the Grail, then what was he doing in Castillon d’Arbizon? He would have taken it to Paris, or to Avignon.’

  ‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ Sir Guillaume said. ‘You mean that isn’t real?’

  ‘One way to find out,’ Thomas said, and he held the cup high. He saw the tiny specks of gold on the glass and he thought it was a beautiful thing, an exquisite thing, an old thing, but was it the real thing? And so he raised his hand higher, held the cup for another heartbeat and then let it drop to the floorboards.

  Where the green glass shattered into a thousand fragments.

  ‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ Sir Guillaume said, ‘sweet Jesus goddamned bloody Christ.’

  Chapter 11

  It was on the morning after the fire had burned out so much of Castillon d’Arbizon that the first people died. Some died in the night, some at dawn, and the priests were busy carrying the consecrated wafers to houses where they would offer the last rites. The shrieks of bereaved families were loud enough to wake Joscelyn who snarled at his squire to go and silence the wretched noise, but the squire, who slept on straw in a corner of Joscelyn’s room, was shivering and sweating and his face had grown evil-looking dark lumps that made Joscelyn wince. ‘Get out!’ he shouted at the squire and then, when the young man did not move, he kicked him towards the door. ‘Out! Out! Oh, Jesus! You shat yourself! Get out!’

  Joscelyn dressed himself, pulling breeches and a leather coat over his linen shirt. ‘You’re not ill, are you?’ he said to the girl who had shared his bed.

  ‘No, lord.’

  ‘Then get me bacon and bread, and mulled wine.’

  ‘Mulled wine?’

  ‘You’re a serving girl, aren’t you? So damn well serve me, then clean up that damned mess.’ He pointed at the squire’s bed, then pulled on his boots and wondered why he had not been woken by the cannon which usually fired at cock-crow. The loam in the gun’s barrel set overnight and Signor Gioberti was of the opinion that the dawn shot did the most damage, yet this morning it had still not been fired. Joscelyn strode into the parlour of the house, shouting for the gunner.

  ‘He’s sick.’ It was Guy Vexille who answered. He was sitting in a corner of the room, sharpening a knife and evidently waiting for Joscelyn. ‘There is a contagion.’

  Joscelyn strapped on his sword belt. ‘Gioberti’s sick?’

  Guy Vexille sheathed the knife. ‘He’s vomiting, my lord, and sweating. He has swellings in his armpits and groin.’

  ‘His men can fire the damned gun, can’t they?’

  ‘Most of them are sick as well.’

  Joscelyn stared at Vexille, trying to understand what he was hearing. ‘The gunners are sick?’

  ‘Half the town seems to be sick,’ Vexille said, standing. He had washed, put on clean black clothes and oiled his long black hair so that it lay sleek along his narrow skull. ‘I heard there was a pestilence,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t believe it. I was wrong, God forgive me.’

  ‘A pestilence?’ Joscelyn was scared now.

  ‘God punishes us,’ Vexille said calmly, ‘by letting the devil loose, and we could not hope for a clearer sign from heaven. We have to assault the castle today, lord, seize the Grail and thus end the plague.’

  ‘Plague?’ Joscelyn asked, then heard a timid knock on the door and hoped it was the serving girl bringing him food. ‘Come in, damn you,’ he shouted, but instead of the girl it was Father Medous who looked frightened and nervous.

  The priest went on his knees to Joscelyn. ‘People are dying, lord,’ he said.

  ‘What in God’s name do you expect me to do?’ Joscelyn asked.

  ‘Capture the castle,’ Vexille said.

  Joscelyn ignored him, staring at the priest. ‘Dying?’ he asked helplessly.

  Father Medous nodded. There were tears on his face. ‘It is a pestilence, lord,’ he said. ‘They sweat, vomit, void their bowels, show black boils and they’re dying.’

  ‘Dying?’ Joscelyn asked again.

  ‘Galat Lorret is dead; his wife is ill. My own housekeeper has the sickness.’ More tears rolled down Medous’s face. ‘It is in the air, lord, a pestilence.’ He stared up at Joscelyn’s blank, round face, hoping that his lord could help. ‘It is in the air,’ he said again, ‘and we need doctors, my lord, and only you can command them to come from Berat.’

  Joscelyn pushed past the kneeling priest, ducked out into the street and saw two of his men-at-arms sitting in the tavern door with swollen faces running with sweat. They looked at him dully and he turned away, hearing the wailing and screeching of mothers watching their children sweat and die. Smoke from the previous day’s fire drifted thin through the damp morning and everything seemed covered in soot. Joscelyn shivered, then saw Sir Henri Courtois, still healthy, coming from St Callic’s church and he almost ran and embraced the old man in his relief. ‘You know what’s happening?’ Joscelyn asked.

  ‘There is a pestilence, my lord.’

  ‘It’s in the air, yes?’ Joscelyn asked, snatching at what Father Medous had told him.

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Sir Henri said tiredly, ‘but I do know that more than a score of our men are sick with it, and three are already dead. Robbie Douglas is sick. He was asking for you, my lord. He begs you to find him a physician.’

  Joscelyn ignored that request and sniffed the air instead. He could smell the remnants of the fires, the stench of vomit and dung and urine. They were the smells of any town, the everyday smells, yet somehow they seemed more sinister now. ‘What do we do?’ he asked helplessly.

  ‘The sick need help,’ Sir Henri said. ‘They need physicians.’ And gravediggers, he thought, but did not say it aloud.

  ‘It’s in the air,’ Joscelyn said yet again. The stink was rank now, besieging him, threatening him, and he felt a tremor of panic. He could fight a man, fight an army even, but not this silent insidious reek. ‘We go,’ he decided. ‘Any man untouched by the disease will leave now. Now!’

  ‘Go?’ Sir Henri was confused by the decision.

  ‘We go!’ Joscelyn said firmly. ‘Leave the sick behind. Order the men to get ready and saddle their horses.’

  ‘But Robbie Douglas wants to see you,’ Sir Henri said. Joscelyn was Robbie’s lord and so owed him the duty of care, but Joscelyn was in no mood to visit the sick. The sick could damn well look after themselves and he would save as many men from the horror as he could.

  They left within the hour. A stream of horsemen galloped out of the town, fleeing the contagion and riding for the safety of Berat’s great castle. Almost all of Joscelyn’s crossbowmen, abandoned by their knights and men-at-arms, followed and many of the townsfolk were also leaving to find a refuge from the pestilence. A good number of Vexille’s men vanished too, as did those few gunners who were not touched by the plague. They abandoned Hell Spitter, stole sick men’s horses and rode away. Of Joscelyn’s healthy men only Sir Henri Courtois stayed. He was middle-aged, he had lost his fear of death, and men who had served him for many years were lying in agony. He did not know what he could do for them, but what he could, he would.

  Guy Vexille went to St Callic’s church and ordered the women who were praying to the image of the saint and to the statue of the Virgin Mary to get out. He wanted to be alone with God and, though he believed the church was a place where a corrupted faith was practised, it was still a house of prayer and so he knelt by the altar and stared at the broken body of Christ that hung
above the altar. The painted blood flowed thick from the awful wounds and Guy gazed at that blood, ignoring a spider that span a web between the lance cut in the Saviour’s side and the outstretched left hand. ‘You are punishing us,’ he said aloud, ‘scourging us, but if we do your will then you will spare us.’ But what was God’s will? That was the dilemma, and he rocked back and forth on his knees, yearning for the answer. ‘Tell me,’ he told the man hanging on the cross, ‘tell me what I must do.’

  Yet he knew already what he must do: he must seize the Grail and release its power; but he hoped that in the church’s dim interior, beneath the painting of God enthroned in the clouds, a message would come. And it did, though not as he had wanted. He had hoped for a voice in the darkness, a divine command that would give him surety of success, but instead he heard feet in the nave and when he looked round he saw that his men, those that remained and were not sick, had come to pray with him. They came one by one as they heard he was at the altar, and they knelt behind him and Guy knew that such good men could not be beaten. The time had come to take the Grail.

  He sent a half-dozen men through the town with orders to find every soldier, every crossbowman, every knight and man-at-arms who could still walk. ‘They must arm themselves,’ he said, ‘and we meet by the gun in one hour.’

  He went to his own quarters, deaf to the cries of the sick and their families. His servant had been struck by the sickness, but one of the sons of the house where Guy had his room was still fit and Guy ordered him to help with his preparations.

  First he put on leather breeches and a leather jerkin. Both garments had been made tight-fitting so that Vexille had to stand still while the clumsy boy tied the laces at the back of the jerkin. Then the lad took handfuls of lard and smeared the leather so it was well greased and would let the armour move easily. Vexille wore a short mail haubergeon over the jerkin that provided extra protection for his chest, belly and groin, and that too needed greasing. Then, piece by piece, the black plate armour was buckled into place. First came the four cuisses, the rounded plates that protected the thighs, and beneath them the boy buckled the greaves that ran from knee to ankle. Vexille’s knees were protected by roundels and his feet by plates of steel attached to boots that were buckled to the greaves. A short leather skirt on which were rivetted heavy square plates of steel was fastened about his waist, and when that was adjusted Vexille lifted the plate gorget into place about his neck and waited as the youth did up the two buckles behind. Then the lad grunted as he lifted the breast- and backplates over Vexille’s head. The two heavy pieces were joined by short leather straps that rested on his shoulders and the plates were secured by more straps at his sides. Then came the rerebraces that protected his upper arms, and the vambraces that sheathed his forearms, the espaliers to cover his shoulders and two more roundels that armoured his elbow joints. He flexed his arms as the boy worked, making sure that the straps were not so tight that he could not wield a sword. The gauntlets were of leather that had been studded with overlapping steel plates that looked like scales; then came the sword belt with its heavy black scabbard holding the precious blade made in Cologne.

  The sword was a whole ell in length, longer than a man’s arm, and the blade was deceptively narrow, suggesting the sword might be fragile, but it had a strong central rib that stiffened the long steel and made it into a lethal lunging weapon. Most men carried cutting swords that blunted themselves on armour, but Vexille was a master with the thrusting blade. The art was to look for a joint in the armour and ram the steel through. The handle was sheathed with maple wood and the pommel and handguard were of steel. It bore no decoration, no gold leaf, no inscriptions on the blade, no silver inlay. It was simply a workman’s tool, a killing Weapon, a fit thing for this day’s sacred duty.

  ‘Sir?’ the boy said nervously, offering Vexille the big tournament helm with its narrow eye slits.

  ‘Not that one,’ Vexille said. ‘I’ll take the bascinet and the coif.’ He pointed to what he wanted. The big tournament helm gave very restricted vision and Vexille had learned to distrust it in battle for it prevented him seeing enemies at his flanks. It was a risk to face archers without any visor, but at least he could see them, and now he pulled the mail coif over his head so that it protected the nape of his neck and his ears, then took the bascinet from the boy. It was a simple helmet, with no rim and with no faceplate to constrict his vision. ‘Go and look after your family,’ he told the boy, and then he picked up his shield, its willow boards covered with boiled, hardened leather on which was painted the yale of the Vexilles carrying its Grail. He had no talisman, no charm. Few men went to battle without such a precaution, whether it was a lady’s scarf or a piece of jewellery blessed by a priest, but Guy Vexille had only one talisman, and that was the Grail.

  And now he went to fetch it.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  One of the coredors was the first to fall ill in the castle and by the night’s end there were more than a score of men and women vomiting, sweating and shivering. Jake was one of them. The cross-eyed archer dragged himself to a comer of the courtyard and propped his bow beside him and put a handful of arrows on his lap, and there he suffered. Thomas tried to persuade him to go upstairs, but Jake refused. ‘I’ll stay here,’ he insisted. ‘I’ll die in the open air.’

  ‘You won’t die,’ Thomas said. ‘Heaven won’t take you and the devil doesn’t need any competition.’ The small joke failed to raise a smile on Jake’s face, which was discoloured by small red lumps that were rapidly darkening to the colour of a bruise. He had taken down his breeches because he could not contain his bowels and the most he would let Thomas do for him was to bring him a bed of straw from the ruins of the stables.

  Philin’s son also had the sickness. His face was showing pink spots and he was shivering. The disease seemed to have come from nowhere, but Thomas assumed it had been brought on the east wind that had fanned the flames in the town before the rain killed the fires. Abbot Planchard had warned him of this, of a pestilence coming from Lombardy, and here it was and Thomas was helpless. ‘We must find a priest,’ Philin said.

  ‘A physician,’ Thomas said, though he knew of none and did not know how one could be got into the castle even if he could be found.

  ‘A priest,’ Philin insisted. ‘If a child is touched by a consecrated wafer it cures him. It cures everything. Let me fetch a priest.’

  It was then Thomas realized the gun had not fired and that no bored crossbowman had clattered a quarrel against the castle’s stones, and so he let Philin go out of the ruined gateway in search of Father Medous or one of the other priests in the town. He did not expect to see the tall man again, yet Philin returned within half an hour to say that the town was as badly stricken as the castle and that Father Medous was anointing the sick and had no time to come to the enemy garrison. ‘There was a dead woman in the street,’ Philin told Thomas, ‘just lying there with her teeth clenched.’

  ‘Did Father Medous give you a wafer?’

  Philin showed him a thick piece of bread, then carried it up to his son who was in the upper hall with most of the sick. A woman wept that her husband could not receive the last rites and so, to console her and to give hope to the ill, Genevieve carried the golden cup around the pallets and touched it to the hands of the sick and told them it would work a miracle.

  ‘We need a goddamned miracle,’ Sir Guillaume said to Thomas. ‘What the hell is it?’ The two had gone to the castle’s tower from where, unthreatened by any crossbows, they gazed down at the abandoned gun.

  ‘There was a plague in Italy,’ Thomas said, ‘and it must have come here.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Sir Guillaume said. ‘What kind of plague?’

  ‘God knows,’ Thomas said. ‘A bad one.’ For a moment he was assailed with the fear that the pestilence was a punishment for breaking the green glass Grail, then he remembered that Planchard had warned him of the disease long before he had found the cup. He watched a man wrapped in
a bloody sheet stagger into the main street and fall down. He lay still, looking as though he were already in his winding sheet.

  ‘What in God’s name is happening?’ Sir Guillaume asked, making the sign of the cross. ‘Have you ever seen anything like it?’

  ‘It’s God’s wrath,’ Thomas said, ‘punishing us.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For being alive,’ Thomas said bitterly. He could hear wailing from the town, and he saw the people fleeing the pestilence. They had their goods in wheelbarrows or handcarts and they pushed past the gun, out of the gate, across the bridge and off to the west.

  ‘Pray for snow,’ Sir Guillaume said. ‘I’ve often noticed that snow stops sickness. Don’t know why.’

  ‘It doesn’t snow here,’ Thomas said.

  Genevieve joined them, still holding the golden cup. ‘I fed the fire,’ she said. ‘It seems to help.’

  ‘Help?’

  ‘The sick,’ she said. ‘They like the warmth. It’s a huge fire.’ She pointed to the smoke coming from the vent in the keep’s side. Thomas put an arm around her and searched her face for any signs of the reddish spots, but her pale skin was clear. They stood watching the people cross the bridge and take the westwards road and, while they watched, they saw Joscelyn lead a stream of mounted men-at-arms away to the north. The new Count of Berat did not look back, he just rode as if the devil himself was on his heels.

  And perhaps he was, Thomas thought, and he looked for any sign of his cousin among the disappearing horsemen, but did not see him. Perhaps Guy was dying?

  ‘Is the siege over?’ Sir Guillaume wondered aloud.

  ‘Not if my cousin lives,’ Thomas said.